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For many music lovers, there was only one possible reaction to the news that Simon Cowell’s The X Factor, once touted (albeit by Cowell himself) as a show that would crush American Idol, had been unceremoniously cancelled: unadulterated glee.

If the mental image of Cowell scuttling back to the U.K. wasn’t cause enough for schadenfreude, this news arrived at almost the same time:

“We know American Idol is winding down,” 21st Century Fox president Chase Carey said this month. Ratings, he added, have “fallen faster than we hoped.” (There’s a diminished standard of success if we’ve ever heard one.)

Why, then, did some of us experience something other than joyful anticipation at the prospect of a world without televised singing competitions?

Idol, mind you, isn’t going anywhere right away, and there’s still The Voice, but the mere possibility of such a scenario made us feel something else: sad.

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Here are three reasons why:

It’s authentic

No, seriously. “There is no such thing as an inauthentic experience — because experiences happen inside of us; they are our internal reaction to the events unfolding around us,” is how the co-authors of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want earnestly put it.

That means even the auditionmost empty, insincere Idol audition is automatically validated by a sincere, heartfelt reaction.

That’s a useful perspective to bear in mind the next time you find yourself sneering at someone else’s taste without being able to articulate exactly why your favourite music is more authentic than theirs.

It offsets the ubiquitous online presence of indie music

Not only does American Idol show how pop music works; it brazenly places that reveal at the heart of each show.

“Yes, it is cruel and exploitative — how could it be otherwise in a marketplace lacking the low expectations and inherited social capital of the indie scene?” the Guardian’s Steven Wells opined in a winking, foaming-at-the-mouth rant back when the show’s audience was twice what it is today.

Imagine a TV competition devoted to indie music, he sneers. “The ability to actually sing would count for nothing — so long as the performer looked and sounded enough like his target audience . . . The judges — all dressed like tramps — would mumble inaudibly about integrity and authenticity, and instinctively vote against any acts that made them want to cry or dance or riot or rush down to their local karaoke bar to get drunk and naked. . .”

They redefine the notion of truth on television

Among the online reaction to the death of the American version of The X Factor that Cowell has inflicted upon this continent for three years, this comment was arguably the most cutting:

“It felt fake even by reality standards.”

In other words, that audience member instinctively chose to highlight the show’s counterfeit nature by comparing it to the phoniness of “reality” television. Two-semester university courses have been built upon those seven words.

Idol, in particular, also upended what the Phoenix New Times’ Serene Dominic once called “the whole winning/losing paradigm.”

The show, she wrote, ruined us by “giving us winners who turn out to be losers, and losers that wind up better off than winners.” In retrospect, it’s a concept that seems as subversive as anything else in music these days.

RETRO/ACTIVE: Police guitarist Andy Summers has a new band and an old mandate. “I’m not trying to play jazz or anything else on this record,” he tells Billboard about the upcoming debut by Circa Zero, a collaboration with vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Rob Giles. “It’s rock.”

Even the act’s touring lineup feels like a throwback: a guitarist, a drummer and a bassist who happens to sing.

Circa Zero’s album, Circus Hero — inspired by a radio DJ’s mispronunciation of their name — is out March 25.

RECORD GROWTH: By one measure, the size of the worldwide vinyl market could be bigger — way bigger — than generally thought.

The website analogplanet.com contacted pressing plants around the world and asked them how many records they pressed up last year. The total: 30,799,783, and that doesn’t include two notable operations (one in Nashville and one in Germany) that didn’t respond.

“We believe the numbers provided by the plants are accurate and that there is a strong correlation between actual albums pressed and records sold,” the site states. “We base that on the fact that plants press only what’s ordered, and what’s ordered by record companies tends to be conservative in order to not build up expensive inventories.”

THE VINYL COUNTDOWN: The entire Thin Lizzy catalogue will be re-released later this year on 180-gram vinyl. For now, however, Universal Canada has just brought out a trio of notable late-career albums: Johnny the Fox, Renegade and Thunder and Lightning.

NEXT YEAR’S MODEL: This may be the most intriguing opening of any song we’ve heard this year:

“He would never do graffiti or vandalize the house/No-oh-oh/And he would never be spray painting on that person’s wall/No-oh-oh/And no one has seen or heard from him since last Thursday. . .”

By verse two, the rationalization has escalated to, “He would never buy a weapon and bring it to our home” and it’s clear why this Norwegian five-piece — fronted by Ingrid Helene Havik, who wrote the lyrics above — is quietly stirring up a low-level buzz leading up to a slot at SXSW.

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